


Singer's Motel

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demisexuality, Domestic, F/M, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 15:29:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was Dean Winchester at fifty: baking, wearing bathrobes outside and planning on a quiet morning of paying bills with money invented by an ex-prophet. And alive. Furiously, impossibly alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singer's Motel

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: While Sam and Dean are not physically intimate in this story, they do occasionally share a bed and are, as always, co-dependent to the max. 
> 
> This story was mostly written pre-season 9 and therefore, is out of step with current canon.

Dean fell asleep on his stomach with Castiel plastered over his back like a persistent cat. Dean woke up on his side with his Sam’s nose poking into his neck and one gangly arm thrown over his ribs in a loosely possessive hold. 

Somewhere along the line, his world had become a very strange place. 

“Are you coming?” Castiel stood at the foot of the bed in viciously green shorts and an ancient t-shirt that had been Dean’s in a former life. 

“Ugh.” Sam huffed out a breath that shivered down Dean’s spine. “Yeah. Shouldn’t have stayed up for that last episode.” 

The bed dipped and someone threw the comforter back over Dean, trapping in the morning warmth. He grinned into his pillow, listening to the rustle of cloth and the closing of the bedroom door, softly, softly. 

He drowsed for another half hour then reluctantly left the soft lit world of the bedroom. The sun had started to sullenly slip through the curtains, a nearly civilized time to get up. Shuffling into slippers and a robe, he made his way to the main office. Sam would bitch at him for looking unprofessional, but that was just soothing white noise these days. 

The percolator was already gurgling, complimentary cups stacked beside it with neatly organized sweeteners. Sam must’ve done it before he left. Dean turned his attention to thawing out a sheet of mixed pastries. None of that store bought bullshit. On Saturday afternoons, Dean would bake for the week: scones, croissants and danishes filled with locally made jams. 

“We’re a motel, not a bed and breakfast.” Sam said every Saturday. “We’re hemorrhaging money, you know that?” 

“Our money is a fiction, invented by Kevin.” Castiel would counter, eating raspberry jam out of the jar with a spoon. 

Dean stuffed half a croissant into his mouth, washing it down with the first cup of coffee. The guests probably wouldn’t show hide or hair for at least another hour. He went outside to retrieve the day’s paper, frowning at the slight chill in the air. The continual mildness of the weather had worn down his old resistance to the cold. There had been nights in the back of the Impala that might’ve killed a lesser man. Now, a chill breeze and he was getting the shivers. 

He grinned at himself as he belts the robe tighter. This was Dean Winchester at fifty: baking, wearing bathrobes outside and planning on a quiet morning of paying bills with money invented by an ex-prophet. And alive. Furiously, impossibly alive. 

They’d bought the motel four years ago, but sometimes Dean was still dizzied by it all. 

At the time it had been ten decrepit rooms and an office with ass ugly carpet. The carpet was almost hypnotizing in it’s hideousness and Dean had spent most of the actual sale staring at it instead of paying attention to the stack of paperwork that he signed with a borrowed name. 

“Why a house?” Sam had asked biting a grape in half and tossing the other at Cas, who managed to catch it in his mouth. 

“That’s where you’re supposed to be.” Dean sighed. “How many times-”

“I’m not arguing happy ever after, Dean. Just where. You and me don’t have a great track record with happy houses.” 

“Happy hotels.” Cas muttered then grinned a little. “You’re better at those.”

“Hey.” Sam looked up. 

“No.” Dean said automatically, an ingrained reaction to the wide eyed ‘but please Dean’ look that had once emptied his pockets of bubblegum. Mugged by a kindergarten Sammy with wide eyes. 

“Who knows how to do it better than us?” 

“There should be mints. On the pillows.” Castiel pulled another grape studied it, peeling away the skin. “Or chocolates.” 

“You don’t put mints on pillows in motels.” Dean argued just for the sake of getting Castiel’s annoyed look trained on him. 

“We can if it’s ours.” Castiel ate the raw grape, flicking the skin into a napkin. 

“We wouldn’t have to find jobs either.” Sam sat back in his chair, the front legs leaving the floor. 

The bunker, home though it had been for nearly a decade, had grown crowded with younger hunters. Kevin and Garth had set up a truly frightening command center rigged with equipment that Dean wasn’t interested in understanding. For the first time in memory, the Winchesters had become...redundant. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Dean didn’t want to leave the concrete safety of his first permanent home, but there was an undeniable itch as he sat idly by watching younger people going about their business with such purpose. 

“You can’t just leave!” Garth looked slapped when they told him, all wide eyes and open mouth. 

“Actually, we can.” Sam shrugged. “You don’t need us and you know...” 

“We’re tired.” Cas sounded it, worn thin and exhausted. 

Hesitantly, Dean reached out and settled his hand on Cas’ shoulder. 

“We’re going to buy a motel.” Dean surprised himself by how happy he sounded at the prospect. It hadn’t been his idea or anything he’d ever considered, but it had it’s own appeal. 

“Oh! That’d be great.” Garth sagged as if relief coursed through him. “You can set up on one of the coasts. Be a way station.” 

“Well...” Sam glanced at Dean who shrugged. They were never going to leave the life behind entirely. “Yeah. Sure. A way station.” 

They debated East vs. West for a long time. Dean voted in favor of the Atlantic and Sam, unsurprisingly, wanted the Pacific. 

“Let Cas decide.” Dean threw up his hands after another marathon argument. 

“Because you know he’ll choose whatever you want.” Sam snorted. 

“Here.” The map unfolded from Castiel’s hands before either of them even offered up the decision. He pointed to a small town in the far north of California. 

Paradise. 

“Really?” Dean ran a finger over the small dot. 

“The motel isn’t in the town directly. It’s on an interstate. I believe it’s currently called the Oyster Motor Inn.” 

It was plenty far away from Palo Alto. Not that Dean held a grudge or anything. That would be ridiculous. Sam even had a few degrees these days, earned over the internet and framed by Dean’s own hands. 

“What kind of shape is it in?” Sam leaned over a pile of printouts that Cas produced from under the nap. 

“Fair to good.” 

They drove out for a long weekend to check on the area and get the lay of the land. Sam tucked into the passenger seat and Cas spread across the back. It gave Dean chills when he pressed on the gas, taking them down the first long road. Too many years had passed since he had traveled like this with no blade or bullet waiting for them at the end of the ride. Just the three of them with the windows cracked open to let in the sweet spring air. 

“This feels good.” Sam murmured, half-asleep two hours out. 

“Yeah, Sammy.” Dean grinned into the rear view mirror. In the back, Cas had one knee bent up and a jacket shoved under his head. Not asleep yet though. Just looking right into the mirror, a reflection of his steady stare hitting Dean right in the eye. 

The Oyster turned out to be a literal one, a giant clam shell stuck up on top of the sign. Dean hated it on sight, but the rest of the place wasn’t bad. The rooms needed renovating, but there was an owner’s house behind it that was in decent enough shape with two bedrooms one at either end of the house for privacy. 

“This one’s mine.” Sam declared, all but whipping it out to pee a mark over the threshold of the smaller bedroom. 

“Like hell.” Dean started. 

“We can share.” Castiel touched the point of Dean’s elbow with two fingers. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” The flush that hit Dean went from the pool of his abdomen up to the roots of his hair. 

All at once, he was remembering, drifting backwards a few years. He stood beside Cas, some forgettable location. 

“I just don’t get it.” Dean complained at the time. “Why everyone thinks me and Sammy are like gay married?” 

It was an innocuous bitching, nothing he expected an answer to or even cared much about either way. Just a conversation to pass time, something on the top of his head after a casual comment from a waitress a few hours before. 

“What is marriage, Dean?” Cas had asked, head tilted and hair mussed as the day they’d first met. 

“Oh, c’mon. I know that you know exactly what it means. Don’t pull that ‘I’ve still got new human smell’ bullshit on me.” 

“I’m not.” Castiel said wide eyed as if he’d never purposely led Dean on in such a manner. “I’m asking you what marriage means. To you.” 

“Oh. Uh. What does it mean to anyone? You know. Vows or whatever. Monogamy. Curtains on the windows. Kids. Permanency.” 

“Except you know that many marriages contain none of those things, except perhaps the vows.” 

“The vows are the start of it.” Dean shrugged. “Look man, I’ve never had a relationship last more than a year so I’m probably not the go to guru on this.” 

“Dean. Why do people get married?” 

Sometimes Cas asked a question in such a way that Dean had to think about it. Couldn’t escape flippantly because it dug under his skin and poked at the foundations of things. At first Dean had wiggled away from the inquiries, squeamish about what they meant, but these days he did think about it. And answered. 

“I guess so they aren’t alone.” He licked his lips. “It’s sort of like saying ‘This is my person’.” 

Castiel smiled, only a little and Dean knew he was sunk. 

“Sam is your person, Dean. He always has been.” 

“He’s one of my persons. People.” Dean had flushed then too, tomato red, but Cas hadn’t said a word. Only kept right on with that small smile. 

So there came this point, in a cramped house with Sam’s pitiful baggage tossed into an empty room and Cas’ fingers alighted on Dean’s elbow. 

Dean turned away and walked to the other bedroom, setting his bags down on the floor right beside Cas’ battered duffel. 

They wound up sleeping on ancient sleeping bags for the first month, collapsing into them after days of re-carpeting and painting. Sam got surprisingly into plumbing, watching DIY videos and hanging a dozen tools off a workman’s belt scrounged from the near empty maintenance closet. 

“Well, guess you’re pretty good at cleaning your own pipes.” Dean teased. 

“Uh huh.” Sam idly flipped him the bird before sliding on a pair of work gloves. “Have fun on your shopping trip, Betty.” 

Dean grumbled. There was nothing enjoyable about Bed, Bath and Beyond. Not when Sam stayed behind to put in new sinks and Castiel was obsessing over the perfect glossy coat of paint on the crown molding. Then again, without them there Dean could make his own choices. He gravitated toward dark colors, dark browns and bruised blues that he thought wouldn’t look too bad with the buttery yellow Cas had chosen for the walls. 

Ill memories of flimsy mouldy curtains hung on dusty cheap metal drove him into a dizzying array of hardware. He bought sturdy and thick, stuff that belonged in nice houses instead of a shitty motel. Sam would probably get belligerent about budget, but all their money came from a much laundered slush fund courtesy of Kevin. They could gold plate the ceilings if they wanted and still have money left over for a caviar bar. Anyway, it wasn’t like Sam hadn’t chosen rich marble tops for the sinks or tried to hide the generous bathtubs under the guise of ‘wholesale discount’. 

It occurred to Dean as he waited on a winding line with two brimming carts that maybe buying this place was a bandaid of sorts. A reaching back to their childhood, blowing away the dirt and setting something clean, comfortable and soft in its place. It was a Sam sort of thought. 

So he mentioned it to Sam. Not in those words, of course. 

“You think this is us slapping a new coat of paint on the ugly shit?” 

Sam, flat on his back and covered in grease, didn’t answer right away. That was all right. Dean knew the sound of Sam thinking by now, the quality of the silence a giveaway. 

“I think it doesn’t really matter.” Sam shrugged, a loose shimmy across the new gleaming tile. “We’re making it what we need it to be.” 

So that was what they did. 

Four years later and they were still doing it. After a surprisingly short discussion, they renamed the place Singer’s Motel and kicked the tacky oyster to the curb. The sign was blue on white, the lights tended to with obsessive care by Cas. No outed bulbs or seizure inducing flashes. Just stately bright letters with a ‘hunter’s discount’ listed under promises of whirlpool bathtubs and HBO. 

Fish and game people came in sometimes. They gave them a five percent discount on a room. Hunters with scars, holy water and dead eyes got half off everything and sometimes more if they looked too thin or shaky. Being a waypoint had its touch and go moments, Dean had decapitated a shapeshifter just three months ago, but for the most part hunters came as a retreat. They would lick their wounds in plush rooms, get research tips from Sam, talk shop with Dean and take solace in Castiel’s steady gaze. 

Mostly though it was just a nicer than average motel on a second rate highway. That’s the way Dean liked it. 

He poured himself a cup of coffee to dunk the other half of his croissant into. He could see Sam and Castiel coming back now, streaks of easy speed and v’s of sweat soaking through cotton. 

Dean had his people, slowing down to stretch and jostle one another. He grinned stupidly out at them, knowing the shadows would hide it away. It wouldn’t do to let them know too much. By the time they barged in, Sam already bitching about Dean’s bathrobe, Dean has set his face to neutral. 

“Good morning.” Castiel bussed a kiss over Dean’s cheek, sweaty and unrepentant about it. 

“Morning.” Dean lifted his cup to his lips, enjoying the touch. Nothing stirred up, but it rarely did anymore. 

Dean wasn’t sure when all of that had started. If it had just been a gradual falling off of one night stands, then he never would have noticed it beyond a passing of an era. After all, how long could you go on banging girls and forgetting their names? 

But it wasn’t just the one night stands. His jerking off had become less of an everyday joy and more of a once a week maintenance routine. Still enjoyable, but more on the level of eating a decent breakfast than an orgasm. Once and a while, when he had a free night and everyone else was safely asleep, he would try to conjure up the old hot blooded feelings. There was porn, vintage and new, and he still liked looking at it, absolutely. Lovely ladies doing lovely things...but if he noticed something else then it was easy to get distracted. Easy to pick up a car magazine or watch one of the thousands of weird movies Sam and Castiel kept adding to their Netflix queue. 

“What the fuck?” He asked his dick on more than one occasion. It twitched lazily at him. 

It got to the point where he was starting to wonder if there was actually something wrong with him. 

Until Castiel walked barefoot into the kitchen while Dean made breakfast one morning. He looked rumpled and worn out, but he’d put his hand at the small of Dean’s back and leaned in to see what he was doing. 

“Bacon?” Cas asked hopefully. 

“Sure, bud.” Dean laughed. 

“Mmm.” Cas hooked his chin over Dean’s shoulder, clearly still half-asleep. “Thank you.” 

A flush of heat had filled Dean’s belly in seconds, taking him off guard. It wasn’t quite arousal, but it wasn’t quite anything else either. Longing, maybe, mixed with pleased satisfaction and a tingle under it all of want. For the first time in...years, maybe, Dean wanted to have sex. He wanted to know what Cas’ clever fingers felt like on his skin. 

And he was okay with not doing it too which was far stranger. He’d always been about instant gratification. Grab what you want with both hands as soon as you could because it might be yanked away before you could get a hold on it. 

But they had this homestead now, Castiel would be there tomorrow and the day after. 

Dean had finally learned to take his time. 

“Gonna grab a shower, did you put out the newspapers?” Sam asked with doubt laden in his voice. 

“Yeah, I did. I got this,” Dean grumbled. “Go get pretty for your girl.” 

“Shut your face,” Sam said mildly and slinked away. 

Castiel made no move to wash off, keeping his sweat stained body draped over the check-in desk like a cat with the cream. His eyes followed Dean as he put the finishing touches on the morning. 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Dean threw out. Once Castiel had mastered that expression, the results were always worth it. 

“I was wondering what a cake with chili powder would taste like. Also, if we should go to the beach tomorrow afternoon.” 

“I’ll try to make one. And sure. ” Because Castiel’s whims were generally worth indulging.

Tamara pulled up in her blazingly red Mini-Cooper. Dean poured a cup of coffee and put a scone on a plate while she took her time sauntering up to the office. She was wearing one of those flowy hippie dresses that made her shapeless blob until the wind picked up and then you could see every single detail of her admittedly smoking hot body. 

“Morning, Dean,” she took the coffee and scone with a wide grin. “Where’s tall, tan and handsome?” 

“Putting on his pretty bonnet for you, I think,” Dean grinned at her. “Sure you don’t want to take me instead?” 

She rolled her dark eyes and sipped her coffee. Dean could never quite remember what she did, something in real estate that kept her busy all the time. She’d picked Sam up one of Sam and Castiel’s drinking nights. Cas had come home alone, chuckling at some private joke and Sam had turned back up two days later with a necklace of hickeys and a dazed look. Tamara wasn’t particularly interested in commitment and had the fantastic habit of referring to Sam as her ‘boy toy’. 

“Because I like to chew on him,” she had said when she first met Dean. “Don’t worry, I’ll give him back in once piece.” 

Dean wasn’t entirely convinced that she was human with the way her eyes sometimes when a little gold in the right light, but whatever kind of creature she was, she wasn’t dangerous. And she kept Sam from moping around like a lonely mop of hair which Dean could appreciate. 

“How was the concert?” Dean asked her as they waited, Castiel still surveying them. 

“Not bad. They’re getting a little too old to deliver the energy they used to,” she sighed. “But the music is still sweet.” 

“What about the venue?” 

“Good sound. They’re having a open mic night next Friday night. You should come with us.” 

“Might do,” Dean glanced over at Cas. “Come with?” 

“That’s my knitting circle night.” 

Dean was also sure that Cas’ knitting circle was made up of witches. He had no actual proof of that and Cas had never reported anything unusual, but everything he made had an unnatural warmth to it like a blessed object. Maybe that was just Cas. 

“Okay, granny.” 

“Leave Cas alone,” Sam pushed past Dean, somehow scooping up a danish at the same time. “He’s allowed to have interests outside of your narrow perscription of masculinity.” 

“You’re just saying that because he made you a sweater first,” Tamara laughed, slinging her arm around Sam’s waist and getting up on her tiptoes for a kiss.

“He likes me best,” Sam said smugly. “See you later, Dean. Cas.”

“Get lost,” Dean grumbled. 

Castiel came around the counter and ghosted a hand over Dean’s back, 

“The knitting circle says it is poor luck to knit a sweater for your sexual partner,” Cas picked up a croissant. “That’s why I made Sam’s first.” 

“Witches,” Dean muttered, but he was smiling.

“Come shower with me,” Castiel demanded. 

“No one to greet the guests.” 

“There’s two of them, still asleep. Check in is four hours away. You can shower with me.” 

They strolled back to the house and shed their clothes on the bedroom floor. The bathroom was still humid and held the smell of Sam’s vanilla body wash. Under the hot water, Cas grabbed the minty bar of soap and washed Dean’s skin with reverent care. The steady heat pooled in Dean’s belly and by the time Cas had finished, he was well on his way to warmed up. 

“Do you want to?” He offered. It had been a few weeks and while Castiel had a deep well of patience, he was probably chomping at the bit. 

“Only if you do.” 

“Yeah,” Dean dropped to his knees, wincing a little at the hard surface of porcelain. 

He loved sucking Castiel down, the heavy weight of him on his tongue and the broken, disbelieving sounds that rained down around him. Cas would card his fingers through Dean’s hair, reverent and tender. When Cas came it was with a punched out breath and the run of his thumb over Dean’s jawline. 

“Do you want?” Cas asked when he recovered enough to help Dean to his feet. 

“No,” Dean kissed him and then turned his face up to the stream of water. “I’m good.” 

And he was. Maybe tomorrow after they’d spent the day in the sun and Dean had watched Cas swim out to the horizon and back or after they’d eaten their fill of seafood and bought new jams for Cas or after they’d come back and Sam told them about the movie he and Tamara had seen or maybe not at all. 

It didn’t matter now. There was world enough and time for it all.


End file.
